Robert Hight admitted the crew chief on his nitro Funny Car, Mike Neff, isn’t one to swing for the fences during qualifying sessions.

However, that wasn’t the case Friday night at the New England Nationals in Epping.

Hight ran a blistering 3.988-second lap to set the track record at New England Dragway and claim the provisional pole.

“That was pretty awesome,” said Hight, who drives the Auto Club Ford Mustang for John Force Racing. “We made a nice pass (4.089 seconds) the first run and Mike Neff told me going up there (to the second qualifying session) that we are not going to be cowards (Friday night). He honestly figured there would be a few other cars running in the 3s and he said he was tired of all those other guys having all the fun. We are going to give it our fair share. It wasn’t like we didn’t know how to do it because we ran some 3.98s in Pomona this year. You know, Neff isn’t a real aggressive racer and usually he doesn’t get a lot of No. 1 qualifiers, but he goes a lot of rounds because he races smart. (Friday night), he said he was just tired of it.”

When Neff’s philosophy changed so did some parts on Hight’s Funny Car.

“We put a different supercharger on and boy, it was unbelievable,” Hight said. “It was one of those runs that was so fast and so smooth that you don’t really know how quick it is running. I got those chutes out and glanced at that scoreboard and saw that 3.98, it was pretty exciting. It’s a great race track and the air is unbelievable. We wanted to put a good show on for these fans in Northern New Hampshire.”

Hight has been putting on a show most of this season. He is the points leader and he has four wins.

Despite all of his success, however, Hight has yet to get a pole position this year, and he wasn’t making any predictions for Saturday.

“We have to go back and look at the computer,” Hight said. “Jimmy Prock (John Force’s crew chief) is one of those guys who picks every single run apart. Mike Neff, he will probably look at it for a few minutes and move on for (Saturday) because (Saturday’s) conditions are going to be different. It’s going to be warmer and (Saturday) is really what we are going to be faced with on Sunday, so (Saturday) is going to be the big day. But, I don’t think Mike Neff will be picking this thing apart. He might say yeah we could have run a little quicker earlier or whatever, and he might think there are some things to do, but he will probably just put that behind him and (Saturday) is the big day.”

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